PC Practice makes (me) terrible!!!

I would need your help to help me figure out what is wrong with my driving. I am a beginner and I don't expect to do really well but I managed to do a few hotlaps around 1:50 some evening (best one being 1:50:002), I tried to push my luck (I was actually not completely sober) and started fiddling with the settings and since then, I am lucky to do 1:51 when I am not doing 1:54 or crashing... All that with the Formula Abarth on Imola. I tried to check hotlaps on Youtube but most of them are done on 1.0.X and things have clearly changed since then.
Hotlap video:

I expect lots of things to be wrong and I am looking forward to the driving academy but if you could point me in the right direction and/or to realistic hotlaps videos and/or setup, that would be nice.

PS: I get this annoying guy telling me when the lap is invalidated, I thought he was part of the Spotter app and disabled the app but the annoying guy is still there, any idea how to make him shut up?

PS2: SOrry for the lack of sound, if anyone can suggest a good video recording workflow, I am interested.

Roaring Pipes Maniacs | #27StaffPremium Member

Without engine sounds it's very hard to judge what you are doing wrong.

If you are having various problems with your game (because of mods) the best would be to start from scratch with a vanilla game.

Only tips I can give you now:

Don't go looking for setups or make any setups tweaks yourself until you master the car and track. This means you can drive consistently the same lap-times lap after lap

Work on your lines. Rule of thumb (which Ill show you at the next driver academy event) is to use the outside-inside-outside technique. This means you enter a corner going to the far outside of the track (use all the width possible) and clip the apex as far on the inside of the corner as possible after which you accelerate all the way to the far outside. Don't be afraid to touch the curbstones.

Make sure to keep an eye on the Premium Driver Academy forum (click "watch forum" to receive notifications when a new event is created) and we'll shave off a lot of seconds from your best lap-time at the next session with a 100% success guarantee

Yes, I can imagine the lack of sound is a big issue, I have included the pedals but I can understand it is not as convenient. I do have the telemetry if it helps but...
If you don't have the annoying guy in your game, it is fair to assume the spotter mod is responsible for that, thanks for confirming this point.
For the setups, the default one gave me way too much understeer and when I got 2 seconds faster by simply stiffening the front ARB, I got cheeky/greedy and tried to get more... I was quite stable at the time but so slow that it really annoyed me, patience is not my main strength, with a bit of luck this hobby will teach me some
For the apex lines, I am actually trying but between throttle understeer making me miss the apex and the tendency of the car to steer to the side when I brake (it might be actually me moving the wheel when reaching for the brake), I am definitely all over the place.
Any tip is welcome and I am looking forward to the driving academy!

Roaring Pipes Maniacs | #27StaffPremium Member

Premium Member

The Spotter app should be silent in single player, it only does notifications in 3 circumstances: car near you, car stopped in front of you, car slow in front of you.

Take a look at a track map, note the longest straights and the corners leading onto them (more specifically, the corners where you are not full throttle; from the first left right left, in the Formula Abarth you should be full throttle in the 3rd corner and thus it's the 2nd one to focus on). To get faster, improve those corners first - open them up as much as possible by entering wide, hitting the apex, and exiting wide.

Stefan Zhang <- Just use this name for conveniencePremium Member

Thanks for the replies.
I figured out a few things:
1) If I ever meet the guy who voices the spotter for RSR, I will have a hard time not punching him considering how much he annoys me (thanks St3fan)
2) I am back to 1:50:3, what I did to get there? I had about 6 pints, upgraded to Windows 10, figured out that the steering was way too slow, launched the Logitech app in order to fix the steering (move from 900 to 540), stopped attacking like a retard (and crashing) on first lap.
Now there is still a lot of work to do but as every drunk driver will tell you, I am clearly a better driver after a few pints. Unless it is the change of steering wheel settings (or simply launching the Logitech app) coupled with the advice I got here.

1) you're not using the whole track. release the car at the exit; you're holding onto the lock until you're at the exit and then unwinding. that kills speed.

2) learn where your tires are and then paint the kerbs with them. notice I didn't say bash them, but use the entire track when possible. Look at your corner entry. That's a ton of room you're not using and in doing so you're tightening the corner more than necessary.

seriously, those two things if you can just trust the car to still be on the road when you use the entire width of the track and let the car release on the exit, you won't believe how slow it'll feel to do the same lap time you're doing now but with those corrections.

Thanks for the tips guys. I ran some tests to figure out why I did not take the outside at the entry of a corner, from what I can see, it is a mix between my braking often sending me to the side (if anyone know how to fix this) and the fact that I still have trouble getting sure where my tires are and hitting the grass usually leads to a crash in my case.
I also saw some guy did a 1:43 on that track this weekend so it is possible to be 7 seconds faster with the current release...

Premium Member

Your main issue is that you don't use track limits very well, and you miss apexes ... Let's take T1 for example: you should stay on the right side of track as much as you can before braking, so you can have the car straight on exit. And when you have a series of corners like T1, you need to think about the "final" exit! so sacrify a bit of entry speed to get faster exit.
On Imola, you need to kiss kerbs to go fast!

I'm just here for the snacksPremium Member

launched the Logitech app in order to fix the steering (move from 900 to 540)

Click to expand...

I could be wrong, but you generally don't want to adjust your steering rotation because AC does this automatically for you for each car, depending on what its steering lock/rotation is. Leave it at 900 and let the game set it for you (happens behind the scenes, just jump in the car and the rotation will be correct for what that car should be, street cars will usually have a higher rotation than race cars). Also, I believe with Logitech it is best to have the profiler app running in the background while you're driving in AC so make sure you open that before you start AC, and leave it open during your session.

Hope that helps some. Also, watch THIS video for some great, easy to understand instruction on how to drive a car fast. It's old, feel free to have a laugh at the fashion and hairstyles, but it's still as accurate as ever.

I'd agree with everyone else it seems to be down to racing lines based on that video, you're not using enough of the track.

Other than that if you're new to sim racing you need to put in loads of laps, practice makes perfect. I think I had to put in something like 60 laps on tracks to put in decent lap times and that's on the likes of Monza that seems like a simple enough track on the face of it. I don't think there's really any shortcut for experience. Put a set of hard or medium tires on the car, fill her tank up and just do as many laps as you can, it will come to you.

Brandon, I think there might be an issue with the Logitech driver under Win10, I had to turn more than 90 degrees for most turns which looks wrong to me considering the car. Moving to 540 allows me to take the last 2 corners with about 90 degrees wheel rotation which seems more accurate.